The ocean is a lonely place. It's wide, cold, and empty for miles-dark as night at all hours, and silent as the grave. Under it's steely surface, there's great expanses of simply... nothing. Nothingness like nowhere else on Earth; one might as well be in another world. Rock and ice make the landscape, while the whistle of wind is replaced by the hourly calls of far-off whales. They're too far away to be company, and it's not like they'd take to strangers anyway.
That's what he was: a stranger. The first and last of a subspecies no god would make for their kingdom, unless as a punishment for unruly subjects, was cursed to wander the frozen northern seas for the rest of his life. (Which, according to his research, could be at least ninety or one-hundred years.) Slow, even strokes of his webbed feet and long, finned tail could carry him for miles on little food or warmth; to where, he didn't know. To far away icy shores of Russia or Alaska, perhaps, to feed and regain his strength.
How fascinating it was, despite his horror, to be a creature like him. Amphibious, with both lungs and gills, flexible, nearly a long tube of nothing but muscle, and with remarkable mental abilities far beyond any ADAM mutation he had ever observed, he was a creature of immense power and boundless intelligence. He was a miracle, an abomination, a god. If he wanted to, he could use his ten-ton bulk to smash apart ships and steal huge masses of fish, or use his psychic powers to influence the small, feeble minds of humans. But he didn't want to: his ambition had gone away with his madness.
His madness had disappeared soon after he was released. Why, he didn't know: there was a good chance that he was still very mad, but the quiet and peace of the ocean had calmed his rage, making him the benign sea monster he was now. Alex the Great was dead and gone, but so was Doctor Gilbert Alexander. Who was he now? Just... a creature, he supposed. He didn't have a real identity anymore-it wasn't like anyone would ever recognize him. Even though he still had his human mind and all of his memories, both were becoming more distant every day. The face of his mother was beginning to get foggy, and he now knew more about the best places to graze for ADAM rich plants than theoretical morality.
ADAM was even beginning to taste bitter to him. Fish was better, and easier on his ailing body. He lacked flat teeth to grind up the plants, and the slugs were too small and few to catch. The pleasure that the chemical gave him was fading away like his human memories, giving away to horrible pain whenever he ingested the stuff. He preferred shark.
For months, he spent his time drifting with the currents. Barely moving his fins, Gil glided along through the frigid water, protected by his thick blubber and barely minding the cold. Every once in a while, his head would break the surface and he'd look around with his weak eyes; he'd see lights in the distance, ships and towns on the shore. Mostly, he'd just see darkness.
Sleeping in caves or just under the ice pack, Gil had long days (as he only traveled by night) to consider his world as it was now. It was very strange having such long, malformed limbs and a tail, and breathing through gills was like being a sponge being constantly filled and squeezed out. Swimming was boring. Being alone was boring.
When Delta had done what he did, Gil hadn't been thankful. Alex the Great had felt triumphant over the slowwitted tin man, having tricked him into sparing his life. Delta had listened, as Alex had known he would, to the pathetic creature's pleas for its life, and had pressed "release" instead of "terminate." The loathsome creature that was Alex the Great had swum away laughing as Fontaine Futuristics collapsed around Delta's ears. He wasn't laughing now. Now he looked back in anger at the monster he had been. At the monster he still was.
The unavoidable truth was that he was trapped. For the rest of his life, he would remain a massive blob of pale, slimy flesh with a few fins to push itself around with. Living on a diet of fish and crustaceans he dug out of the silt with twisted, webbed hands, swimming around and around in circles like a goldfish in a tank, and considering things that he might do with his miserable existence, he didn't have anything to really live for. How did his life come to this? How did Gilbert Alexander get reduced to the life of a massive lungfish?
It could only be his fault. Curse him for looking to the sky and wishing for a better world.
###
Winter was setting in.
It began when the walruses began to flee. It was on the second day of the full moon, as the moon was Gil's only way of telling time. The great shapes of the tusked beasts splashed into the waves, sending shutters down Gil's lateral line. The sea came alive with a crackling net of electricity from all the warm-blooded bodies heading south to Iceland. Gil watched them from the mouth of his dark burrow in the face of an iceberg, blowing water through his gills as he fought the urge to charge out and devour a pup or two or fifteen. His stomach was empty, as all the fish were long gone to the south. He hadn't tasted anything finer than bait squid in weeks.
He couldn't eat a walrus. Too much blood, too much fighting. Fish were a nice, clean, easy meal, without any of the shrieking or struggling.
Huffing, Gil slid out of his cave with a mighty swish of his tail. A long trail of silt followed him like a contrail, mixing with dead skin and other foul bits that always floated around him. He glided gracefully through the thin, cold water, shivering and popping his many new joints that were often stiff. The hundreds of walruses bobbed and swam in great masses, churning the water with their weight and numbers, and Gil picked out some individuals he knew rather personally. There was a beachmaster with one broken tusk, and a smaller male who had the beachmaster's missing tusk permanently stuck in his side. Gil had been watching the herd like a voyeur, trying to fight off boredom and despair with research. For a few hours out of the day, he could make observations that no other scientist could have made, and it made him feel like himself again.
Even through the chaos of the migration and the growing dread cold of the water, Gil went about his nightly routine. He swam across the bay, which had thicker ice over the surface than last week, and came up to a large rock. Taking a deep breath of water, he heaved himself with all of his limbs onto the rock. His white, transparent claws scratched into the stone, and he pulled himself up into the air.
The surface world hit him with a chilly blast of razor sharp, icy wind. His pale, slimy skin tensed and twitched in the elements, and he had to shut his eyes against the powder snow whipping in the vicious gale. It hadn't been this cold in a long, long while.
Water ran out of his gills, and he took a long draught of the cold air. His eyes swam open, protected by a gray membrane, like a shark's eye. Everything went in and out of focus.
This was his time, up here on the rock. The time he had to breathe air and feel... not normal, but better. Something familiar, like breathing air, made him feel a little warmer on the inside.
But he didn't just come up here to mourn and breathe. There was something else he indulged in.
At midnight, every night, a ferry went by Gil's iceberg home. It was a large ship, with a steel bow for cutting through ice. Gil didn't know who was on the boat, but the fact that someone was on the boat, someone with eyes, made him crawl up on that rock every night.
Stretched out luxuriously, Gil gave a long, mournful cry. It sounded like a whale's call, low and song-like, then became very high-pitched and keening, like a woman screaming. He opened his huge, fang-rimmed mouth, bellowing with full lungs at the ship, propping himself up on his hindmost limbs. The cry lasted for fifteen seconds, long enough to leave an impression.
A yell came up from the ship. Gil's sharp ears picked up on panicked screams from frightened sailors up on the deck. He only knew a little Icelandic, less and less every day, but he could pick up the word for "sea monster" quiet easily. A screeching laugh ripped out of his wet lungs, making the sailors panic even more. They screamed like frightened children, scrambling for weapons or just staring dumbly into the water, gaping like fish at the glorious image of Alex the Great.
So maybe Gil wasn't entirely sane yet.
After a few minutes, Gil grew bored and slid back into the water, giving the sailors one last glimpse of his smooth, transparent pink skin before vanishing into the dark, icy soup. Bubbles blew out of his nostrils as he breathed the air out of his lungs, chuckling to himself. He rolled onto his back and pushed along with his tail.
Every night, Gil haunted the ships passing through the ice pack, threatening them with frightening cries and personal appearances, feeling very clever when he surprised them. At first, they had only reacted with shouts to their captains and confusion, but now they started screaming if he so much as broke the water with a spout of spray.
Gil loved his hobby. He didn't know why, but it made him feel better.
From below, he watched the black belly of the ship pull off in a frightened burst of speed, allowing a few more bursts of radar to bounce off his bulk before diving deeper and out of their range. Look at me, he thought to himself. And be afraid.
Being a sea monster, there wasn't a whole lot Gil could do to interact with people besides scaring them. The sight of human faces filled his empty heart. The terror he could shake out of seasoned seamen was an added bonus to his maddened ego.
Twisting like a synchronized swimmer, Gil dove deeper and deeper, out of the eye of the moon. His misshapen limbs flicked, pushing him along at great speeds into the blackness, to the only place where there were still fish. His tiny eyes were useless at this depth, so he closed them, and found his way with clicks and whines from deep in his throat.
Scrrreeeee... Urrrrrrr-ur-ur-ur-ur... The sounds echoed off the rocks and back to the keen ear-slits on the sides of his huge melon-head. He flicked his short neck, scanning the sea floor for signs of life. The blackness pressing in on him made him feel strange, contrasting the vibrant map of the landscape in his mind, and the sense of direction he had from all the strange gatherings of fluid and alien systems in his long, emaciated body. Breathing slowly through his gaping mouth, he took larger and larger gulps of water as he went down to the depths that had thin oxygen just as the highest mountain peaks have thin air.
Fishing was hard these days. He was losing blubber by hundreds of pounds every week. His ribs poked through his slimy skin. A sharp, strangely shaped hip bone protruded from his side. Knobs stuck up from his tail.
Weight was melting him almost as fast as his memories. He didn't remember the face of the woman who had done this to him, or the girl he had raised almost as his own, then watched as she became the object of worship for a crowd of filthy wretches. Bowing, chanting... the traditions of the Family were lost on him. His own family was lost to him.
Emotions became simpler. Memories became faint.
The fish were the only thing that mattered.
###
Weeks went by, and the water grew colder and colder. Huge stalactites of ice dangled into the ceiling of the ocean like sharp briars; Gil nursed wounds on his back from the sharp icebergs, whimpering with pain as he slept during the day. Tired and hungry, he had not eaten in three days.
Thoughts were becoming as scarce as fish. Gil drifted along in the freezing water during the day now, despite the pain that lanced his sensitive eyes.
He stopped his midnight raids on the Icelandic barges, forgetting about the rock and the taste of air in his mouth. Every once and a while, he'd break the surface and let the sun warm his freezing, cold-blooded body. Long, red streaks went down his back from the scorching fingers of light. He didn't care all that much, because the fish were the only thing that mattered. The last scraps of his human memories clawed at the edges of his consciousness as he drifted along, snapping up fish whenever he came to them. He saw bits and pieces, nothing whole or coherent, unreal and strange. A woman with cold blue eyes. A beautiful child. Machines, wires and gears. A man standing in front of a mirror, struggling to fit into a three piece suit, shaking and looking into his own face with complete terror, eyes wide, brows shuttering, his mouth open to a thin slit. His eyes were filmy and out of focus.
Who was this man?
The thought made him chuckle, and bubbles floated up from his jagged mouth. How funny that man was. He was far too fat for that suit, and he looked so scared! Why on Earth was he so afraid of that suit or that mirror, when he was so well fed and warm? He didn't have anything to worry about in the warm, soft walls of wherever he was. An opulent castle, with comfortable furniture and armed guards standing outside the door. He shouldn't be afraid of a little fat around his gut. Gil wished he had that much to spare.
As winter closed in around him, Gil began to wander farther and farther away from the caves and fossilized reefs that kept him hidden from the prying eyes of locals, swimming out into open water and almost being snagged in nets. One morning, he found himself out in a great, vast expanse of clear water, alone and close to unconsciousness. His back broke the surface as he swam, his tail stirring up foam, ice forming on the sail running from the back of his neck to the tip of his tail. Spray and steam rose up from his head when it rose over the rough waves.
A monster alone, long, sad moans rising and falling through the quiet sea. Directionless, tired.
Today, Gil was lost in another one of his flashbacks. In his mind, he was watching the strange man again: now he was in a smaller room that was lit softly with candles. A woman sat at a desk, punching the keys of a typewriter delicately and with bizarre efficiency.
"How are you feeling today, Dr. Alexander?" The woman asked dryly. Her eyes stayed on her paper.
The man swallowed, smacking his lips as if he were having trouble breathing. "Very poorly, Dr. Lamb. I've started having nightmares. I'm feeling very sick, very nauseous."
Without turning around, the woman nodded and made a footnote on a piece of paper next to her: Nauseous, psychosis developing.
Quivering, the man stumbled closer to her, putting out his hand, which was large and meaty. Thin skin stretched between the short fingers, dripping with strange slime. The woman pulled away, still not looking up, her face unchanged.
"Please do not touch me, doctor. You could contaminate the experiment," she said.
Rejection hit the man's face like a physical blow. His sagging jowls hung limp from his face, and those gray eyes lost focus again. He was turning a sickly tint of pale yellow, and sweat was beading on his forehead. Those large hands clenched together.
"Wh-what do you suppose we do now?" He asked. "Will I... well, I suppose I will. If I am not a Utopian, then I must be a common Splicer."
Something resembling amusement crossed the woman's face. Finally, she set down her work and turned to face him. "No, Dr. Alexander. You are far from that," she said. "Look at yourself."
He looked down, putting his flipper-like hands in his pockets. "I prefer not to."
"How much weight have you gained?"
"About twenty three kilograms."
She nodded in that horrible knowing way again, and made more notes. The man looked about to vomit. A tear ran down the side of his face as he became hysterical.
"I don't want to go insane, Dr. Lamb!" He choked. "You can't do this to Eleanor!"
"I've done more studies. Nothing will happen to Eleanor," Dr. Lamb said. Her face was serene, like a saint's.
"What about me?" The man asked, his voice squeaking. "What will become of poor, poor Gilbert?"
Frowning, Dr. Lamb knitted her fingers in front of her. She looked very bored now, as if this man was bothering her for a raise.
"I've predicted that your condition will continue to deteriorate," she said calmly. "You may be in some discomfort for several weeks."
"Then what?"
An eyebrow went up on the woman's face. "You will be in discomfort for several weeks, Dr. Alexander, while your body adjusts. In the mean time, I will begin the process on Eleanor, and you will assist me for as long as you are able. You should not question the will of the people."
A gurgling noise came from the man. His flipper hands came out of his pockets, one holding an handkerchief, which he dabbed on his face. Thick, sticky-looking stuff clung to the fine silk square, leaving a yellow blotch. He didn't say anything; the only sound in the chamber for several moments was his pained, labored breathing.
"I won't," he finally said. "The Family is the most important thing. I'm just very uncomfortable."
A calm, kind smile spread across Lamb's face. "You will not know discomfort in time, Doctor. You will be one with the sacred daughter and all will be well."
Gil had the feeling that the man believed her entirely. His face relaxed, and a little smile formed under his dripping cheeks, as if everything was fine again. He walked out of the room, his gait stiff and uncomfortable, his hands shaking before sliding back into his pockets. From his blurry view of the scene, Gil could see the man hunch up his shoulders, pulling the collar of his coat over a small, wet opening in his neck. The woman made another note in her book.
Blips. Bits and pieces after that. He saw the man walking down a long hallway lined with cages, all of them empty and silent. His nice shoes splashed in green, grungy water, getting more soaked and ruined than they already were. One was even beginning to split at the toe, showing a flat, clawed foot. That pained, sad smile stayed on his face, as if he were a machine.
Then, like a mote of smoke, the memory faded and vanished. Gil was back in the ocean, back in reality, back in his heavy, stiff, hungry body. Blue calmness was all around him, and he realized he was very far from his territory, in a huge expanse of open, warmer water. Putting out his fins, he glanced around, gaping his gills in panic. Where was he? He was floating, without a floor or walls of stone to make him feel protected and invisible. Out in open water, he was a huge, pink sore thumb.
Turning in circles, Gil looked desperately for something familiar, something to head for. Nothing but thick, blue fog for as far as he could see. Daylight stabbed through the murky water, making his skin tingle. He had been drifting for hours. He was far from home. There were no walruses here.
His gills pumped. His fins flicked randomly, keeping his bulk from sinking. Blinking, Gil twisted and swam upward, surging toward the surface and breaking it with a leap.
Spray hissing from his nostrils, Gil's head appeared in the vast plain of heaving waves, and immediately the sun stung his eyes before thin membranes slid over them. He looked around, and saw nothing but ocean.
He swallowed, his weak mind registering fear and discomfort. Ears flicked back, he whimpered like a struck dog. Things were strange and crumbly in his simple, linear thoughts, his brain unable to register anything except the facts: he was looking out at an empty sea and sky, the sun was setting, but was still unpleasantly warm, and sea birds were beginning to glide down to land on the top of his head. He shook, but the gulls only came back, prodding him with their sharp beaks and pulling at clumps of hardened salt stuck to his skin.
Where am I?
The singular thought drifted by like a piece of paper caught in the current. All that he cared about was the growing pain in his stomach and the aching stitch creeping up his side from treading water for so long. Letting the air run out of his lungs, Gil pulled back underwater, forcing the screaming birds off of his head.
Now what?
Keep drifting, his instincts told him. Go south, there are fish there. Warm weather, deep waters. Hiding places. He agreed sleepily, threatening to go under again. If he fell asleep on the drift again, he wouldn't wake back up; starvation was clawing its way into him, shaving off the last foot of blubber between his innards and the cold outside. Getting on the move would warm him up.
Flicking his tail, Gil started south with purpose. He kept his mind on images of sun, sand and fish, breathing steadily and keeping careful time with swishes of his limbs. Determined, he focused on the feeling of the water growing warmer as the day's warmth settled in after dusk. The water grew darker and darker as night set in, and after sundown, Gil started regaining his strength. A small smile grew on his fleshy mouth as he sucked down a wayward pack of krill, the first food he'd had in almost two weeks. Energy filled him in the growing dark as more krill and even small fish began to appear.
What a thing! This new place was full of food! Stopping, Gil glanced around to see hundreds of shimmering bodies fleeing his sharp teeth, catching the moonlight like coins. A surge of speed let him swallow a whole school of bait fish, filling his aching stomach. Green kelp grew in glowing groves below, and the calls of seals could be heard from somewhere far away.
For a few hours in this place, Gil forgot his problems. The last few scraps of his humanity were gone for that time, letting him be free. If he had stayed like this, in a rich reef growing on the corpse of a sunken ship, he would have died happy. The flashbacks would have gone away, and everything would have been fine.
The taste of blood hit his tongue.
Intrigued, Gil sucked in more reddish water, tasting fish and viscera floating free in the water. A chunk of tuna floated by his nose, but he didn't register anything strange. He swallowed it, not thinking anything of it. Another bit went by, and the water begun to cloud up with red mist. Slowly, GIl began to realize that something was off.
And he realized it far too late.
Following the trail of dead fish, Gil brushed against something suspended in the water. He didn't notice it until he ran into another invisible barrier, which he stared at in bewilderment. He couldn't really see what was in front of him; it was dark and his vision was poor to begin with. Twisting like an eel, he looked for a way around from the barrier that was biting into his skin and surrounding him.
Net! NET NET NET, YOU FOOL!
Before he could do anything about it, Gil found that he could no longer move.
Like a deadly, smothering nightmare, he was suddenly surrounded by squeezing, pulling, biting ropes. His many limbs were forced to his sides, and panic set in as the binds grew tighter and tighter.
NET! NET! REMEMBER TO BREATHE! Look up, look up!
Lashing violently, he tore at the net with all of his strength, but it was futile. The bloody water became a boiling froth as the horizon tilted and twisted as he tried to escape. A scream of terror ripped through the quiet ocean.
He was going to die.
###
I'm not dead, although I'm highly doubtful that any of you actually thought I was. This is definitely not my best work; a lot of it was rather rushed and written out while I was blocked on other things, though I've written a second chapter that I'll post in a day or two that I think is quite a bit better. The Average People isn't deadfic yet, but I probably won't start up on it again until summer, or at least after exams in a few weeks.
I know I'm not the only one who's wondered what would happen to Gil if he really fled out into the open ocean when Delta spared him. Since we don't really have a canon description of him, I had to kind by one blurry concept piece and a lot of fanon guessing. (Why does everyone think he has six arms?) I'll update this. Probably. I miss my screaming hoards of adoring fans. You guys are like diamond tools in Minecraft: sturdy, loyal, shiny and awesome. And teal.
Cheers,
Skull
